


Time Pockets

by Kahvi



Category: Red Dwarf
Genre: Gen, Humor, M/M, Science Fiction
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-20
Updated: 2013-12-20
Packaged: 2018-01-05 06:22:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,089
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1090655
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kahvi/pseuds/Kahvi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Red Dwarf crew are having a hard time with... well... time. While Lister is trying to get a GELF device which literally saves time working, Rimmer finds himself in mortal - as it were - peril from another time-related problem. Meanwhile, Kryten fusses and Cat hunts metaphors.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Time Pockets

**Author's Note:**

  * For [eruthiel](https://archiveofourown.org/users/eruthiel/gifts).



> Much love and thanks to my regular beta, for her encouragement, love, and metaphors.

As carefully as he could, Kryten stepped over the discarded bags of Malteasers and Extreeeeme Onion flavored crisps, empty cans of lager and various other casualties of Mister Lister's all-nighter. It was not an overly easy task, as the floor was not only littered with refuse, but an assortment of tools and electronic components, none of which were supposed to be left unattended on a beer, chocolate and crisp crumbs-strewn surface. Kryten felt certain this would invalidate their warrantee. Then again, few companies tended to issue million year plus guarantees these days, so the point was, in all likelyhood, moot. Approaching the mountain which was rising, with difficulty, from this sea of debris, Kryten coughed once, politely.

After a beat, seeing no reaction, he coughed again, somewhat louder.

The mountain stirred. Eventually, and with some difficulty, Mister Lister emerged from beneath the unfolded technical manual under which he had been sleeping, his nose twitching in that peculiar and somewhat disturbing way particular to human beings. Why more people did not simply replace their olfactory apparatus with a more sensible, sturdy and flame resistant version less prone to leaking and sniffling, Kryten could not say.

"Good morning, sir."

Mister Lister yawened. "Is it morning?"

"1:30 PM precicely, sir. Nice and early, as agreed" Kryten ceremoniously removed the lid from the covered dish he had brought with him. "Your curried corn flakes, sir. I took the liberty of adding a little hot sauce to the usual recipe."

To Kryten's considerable delight, Lister appeared to quicken at this. "Kryten, man; yer a gem." He grabbed eagerly for the tray. Kyten hurriedly handed him a spoon, remembering what had happened last time, and stood respectfully back.

"Any luck, sir?"

Mister Lister shook his head, cornflakes flying. "Not yet. I feel I'm getting close, though!"

"Did I hear food?" Mister Cat appeared in the doorway, unfurling a napkin. "I'm pretty sure I can smell it, too. I don't know what it is, but I don't care; I've been down in the diesel decks all night, hunting that thing!"

"What thing, sir?"

"The thing! The metaphor!"

Mister Lister raised his head, a tad abruptly, from the look of things. He did struggle so with early mornings! "You were chasing a metaphor?"

"Yeah! Captain shiny-pants said I couldn't find one if it slapped me in the face, but nobody sneaks up on me! I'm going to find it before it finds me!"

"Captain shiny-pants," Mister Lister muttered, "there's a new one."

"So are Mister Rimmer's pants," Kryten helpfully informed him. "Brand new. The fabric is a virtual replica of the decor on that rather quaint little bistro station we passed a few weeks ago."

Mister Lister frowned. "The one with the pleather curtains? I really don't think that was a bistro, man."

"Hey!" Sensing, no doubt, that he was no longer the center of attention, Mister Cat slinked closer to the mound of electronics - with very little regard for Mister Lister's personal space, Kryten noted with dismay - and started batting at it. "Are you still trying to make that thing work?" 

Mister Lister swatted his hand away. "Yeah. No luck, though." He ruffled through the papers in front of him, emerging with a small, transparent sphere, about the size of a ZC23-B8 drive manifold pin, or as Mister Lister might have put it, a Malteaser. The little lights festooned up and down its surface were as dead and cold as they had been ever since Mister Lister had found it at the arcade on the GELF mall-planet they had just narrowly escaped from. Kryten shuddered at the thought; had they stayed any longer, the laundry might have gone through an extra spin-cycle without fabric softener being added!

"What do you need a time pocket for anyway?"

"It's a time _restorer_. It saves up the time you don't need, and lets you use it when you do." He sighed, banging a fist on the manual, now in pieces and positioned in several places around the room; in many places, stained by what Kryten discretely used a PH-spectrum analysis to confirm was beer. "Or it would be, if I could get the smegging thing working!"

"Why would anyone want that?"

"Because not all people spend most of their time sleeping, preening, or dreaming about preening!"

Mister Cat shrugged, brushing what Kryten could only be imaginary lint from his faux-velvet cuff. "That's their loss."

" _I_ need a time restorer because I don't have enough time! Kryten did some calculations-"

Kryten immediately brushed him off, wishing he'd taken the time to install a blush subroutine. Or at least have thought ahead to bring some blusher around for these occasions. "It was nothing, really!" 

Mister Lister shook his head, vigorously. "It was chilling, that's what it was. Proper fright fest material. He figured out that with just the four of us running this ship and monitoring the flight computers, it'd take us... what was it again, Krytes?"

"Just under 4 billion years, sir."

"Exactly; 4 million years-"

" _Billion_ , sir."

"All right; all right! A smegging twonk-load of years, yeah, to find a way back to Earth." His face fell, lips drooping, endearingly. Like most mechanoids, Kryten found most human facial expressions absurdly alien, but over the years he found he had grown accustomed to Mister Lister's face. "Even if we had Holly back, we'd still have to make choices in course navigation. Four brains only go so far."

There was a moment's silent reflection, in which both Mister Lister and Kryten turned, briefly, towards Mister Cat. 

"Anyway, I figured, if I could have more time, somehow, if I could store up all the useless hours I spend, and get credit for them..." He shook his head. It saddened Kryten that he did not have a heart to go out to him! "Oh, what's the use. I've got three thousand yottabytes of data to go through! That's... that'd be like..." He looked up at Kryten, imploringly.

"Like trying to empty the Atlantic Ocean with a cheesecloth into a sieve, sir."

Mister Cat leaned back, having found a particularly glittery piece of metal sheeting, which he was currently bouncing between his hands. "Man, you don't even have time to invent a time pocket!"

"Yeah, I should invent a time pocket to solve that problem." Mister Lister slapped himself. " _Restorer! Time restorer!"_

"How does that work, then?" Mister Cat leaned even closer, and Kryten wrung his hands, nervously.

"I don't know! I can't get it working, and I can't read the manual!" With concentrated effort, Mister Lister removed his left boot, swung it over his head by the laces, and swatted at the errant pieces of manual with it with a yell of frustration. Eventually, the flurry of papers settled, at the feet of what appeared to be the naked, furious form of Arnold Rimmer. Quite possibly because it was.

"You're obviously busy, so I'd hate to interrupt," he said, his voice littered with static, "but I seem to be having a problem."

In the space where his abdomen and groin should be, there was now only a pixellated blur.

* * *

All told, an afternoon staring at Rimmer's crotch was not one of Lister's dreams come true, unless you counted those really weird dreams he'd had about ten years back, but Lister tended not to. Those had been confusing, difficult times; he'd found Kochanski, he'd lost Kochanski again, he'd lost an arm, he'd gotten an arm back, he'd started cleaning his underwear more frequently; things like that could change a man. Opposite him, the hologram was now seated in the medibay examination chair, leaning back at an awkward angle. Awkward for all concerned. "Could you at least," Lister sighed, rubbing his hand across his face, "put yer uniform on, man?"

"I would if I could, Lister," Rimmer snapped. White noise interspersed with his usual, heavy Ionian accent, making his consonants little more than crackling static. "I don't know if you've noticed, but nothing about my body seems to work properly."

"Nothing about yer body ever has."

"You think it's funny, do you? The fact that my body is degrading in front of your eyes? That I'm lying here naked and helpless in front of you? That's what you've always wanted, isn't it?"

"Believe me, Rimmer; that's pretty smegging far from what I've always wanted." Lister picked at his teeth. The bickering back and forth was soothing, like a nice, warm cup of tea. A welcome distraction from that feeling in the pit of his stomach. _Which Rimmer, currently, did not have. Don't think about that. Don't look at it. Look at his eyes_. Lister looked into his eyes. The usual murky green and brown mess was broken up by monochrome gray. Lister swallowed. "Tell me what happened, again?"

Rimmer rolled his eyes, which was good, as Lister didn't have to look at them for a moment. "I was taking a shower. I had just turned to soft light to clean my light bee, and when I switched back again..." He prodded at the indistinct mass beneath his navel. The blur of pixels shifted, like a cheap caleidoscope.

"Does it hurt?"

"No. You'd think it would, wouldn't you?" Rimmer pulled his hand back to pat at his head. "And my hair's going gray."

Lister leaned in closer, pushing Rimmer's hand away and taking a few strands between his fingers. Rimmer flinched, but Lister held firm. Fine; Rimmer didn't like other people touching his hair, but they were a little beyond that, at this point. "It's not gray," he muttered, "it's monochrome. Like a black and white film."

"What; like my power save mode?" Rimmer turned, trying to see.

"Holograms used to be like that, didn't they? All black and white, no color? Staticky around the edges?"

"Are you saying I'm _regressing?_ "

"I'm not saying anything; I don't know, OK?" Lister put his hands up and stepped back. Kryten was taking his own sweet time in the holo projection suite, wasn't he? How long could it take to look through Rimmer's personality stack?

"Oh smeg." Rimmer's pasty-white features grew even paler. Or was there - Lister squinted - a touch of gray in the photons that made up his skin? "I don't want to regress; you've no idea what my childhood was like."

Lister grimaced, trying to look nonplussed. Rimmer had certainly told him enough...

"I don't want to go through all that again; the short trousers and the decending testicles and changing voice were bad enough on their own, the first time. I can't regress; I can keep getting younger and younger; _tell me I'm not regressing!_ " He surged forward on the chair, grabbing Lister's shoulders and shaking them, just as Kryten entered.

"Mister Rimmer," the mechanoid added, with a faint hint of reproach, "I'm afraid I have some bad news. Something is preventing the natural regression process your hologrammatic projection regularly goes through."

Rimmer blinked. "I'm not regressing?"

"I'm afraid not, sir. And I'm sorry to have to tell you this, but the condition is, of course, fatal."

Rimmer, whose hand was still on Lister's shoulders, began shaking him again, like an oversized marracca. "I'm not regressing - _oh smegging smeg - why aren't I regressing!_ "

" _Sir,_ ," Kryten interrupted him, firmly and not-too-gently removing Lister from his grip, "please remain calm. There may be a way to reverse the process."

"Process," Lister asked, rubbing his shoulder, "what process? What's going on?"

"That's what I'd twonking like to know, too," Rimmer glared. He twitched, from time to time, and Lister wondered if it was nervousness or simply repeated attempts at trying to get his uniform back on.

"Well," Kyten turned to him, clearing his throat, "as you may know, your body - or rather, your light bee - employs an aging simulation, making you appear to age naturally. However, as the operational life span of a hologram is much longer than that of a living human being, the simulation periodically resets, returning your apparent age to that of your age at your time of death. This process has now stopped, for reasons unknown."

" _As you may know_ ," Rimmer waved his arms in imitation, "Kryen, what are you; a Star Trek info-dumping device? I was imprisoned in a dungeon for centuries by an army of my own clones; I've watched myself age and de-age several times over! Of _course_ I know!"

Lister had _not_ known. He remembered the cell, Rimmer's vacant face; the worry-balls, ground to the size of marbles... He swallowed. "Why, though? And why's it killing him?"

"You have to remember, sirs, that JMC never intended for their holograms to be running as long as Mister Rimmer has now been. However, several were in use on long-running missions, and it was believed that seeing their friends remain timeless and unaging would turn the crew against any hologrammatic crewmates. As for why it's killing him..." Kryten hesitated. "I can't be certain, but as the regression process is prevented from taking place, Mister Rimmer's bee appears to keep trying to age him, despite having no information on which to base his new appearance."

"So that's why he's all gray and jumbly?"

"That is my theory, sir. The bee is trying to display a simulation based on data which does not exist."

Rimmer rubbed his arm, carefully. He seemed to be avoiding contact with his own body as much as possible. "That hardly sounds fatal. So I'll go a bit," he glanced at Lister, "jumbly. So what?"

Kryten shook his head. "Aging isn't an instantanious process. The simulation will replace parts of your body gradually, as the aging subroutine runs. For now, most of your physical form is still based on existing data, which keeps you fairly stable, but eventually..."

"What?" Lister snapped, getting between Kryten and Rimmer's chair, as though he could stop the diagnosis by physically blocking it. "He'll turn to nothing? He'll basically melt away, is that what yer saying?"

"Possibly _rot_ would be a better word..."

"Better!" Rimmer squeaked.

"Great," Lister groused. "Smegging fantastic. We've got a zombie hologram."

* * *

So he was doomed man. It should, Rimmer reflected, make him feel a lot better than he currently did. Shouldn't there be a swelling of stoic pride, a settling calmness? That's what it was always like in old war films, when the hero was about to face the enemy firing squad. Just before he refused the blindfold and accepted the cigarette - Rimmer never really understood why anyone would refuse a cigarette; even though those ancient cigarettes would kill you, you hardly had much to lose, under the circumstances - anyway, just then, in that sort of situation, Rimmer had assumed you'd get a surging, reassuring feeling that you'd lived a full, rich life, true to yourself and your ideals. He sighed, watching Lister rummage through yet another crew quarters, ancient socks, underwear and brick-a-brack flying. That was where it all fell down, of course, for Arnold Judas Rimmer.

Well. If stoic and noble would not come to him, Rimmer would have to come to it. Them. Whichever. "It's no use, you know."

Lister poked his head out of the closet. A somewhat suspect pink slip of a garment was draped over his left shoulder. "What's that?"

"It's no use. You won't find anything. Not in time to save me." Rimmer assumed what he hoped was a suitably statuesque pose. His shaking knees somewhat ruined the effect, but on the other hand he _was_ naked, like all those Greek fellows. He felt himself begin to sweat slightly. It was either the effects of his bee malfunction, or the compound interest on the amount of self deception.

"What's your suggestion then; give up and die?"

"I'm already dead. I keep telling you."

Lister threw a sock at him. "Stop _existing_ , if that makes ye feel any better! Stop arguing the semantics."

Rimmer watched him turn his back and return to the tedious process of systematically emptying every shelf and drawer. Since when had Lister started using multi-syllablic words? Rimmer wasn't entirely sure that, if pressed, he could define the term 'semantics' accurately himself. He faltered a bit, taking a step back, knees crackling ominously.

"We're going to fix you, all right?"

And then make a machine to get more time, and find the Earth, and get Kochanski back... "Even if you fix me now, I'm not going to last forever," Rimmer said, and immediately shut his mouth again. Where had that come from?

"You've lasted a good few centuries already, man."

"That makes me _less_ likely to last any longer, not _more!_ I'll be gone eventually, Lister. I realize it must break your heart, but you'll have to make your peace with it sooner or later."

"Shut up, Rimmer."

"You'll have Kryten to take care of you, I suppose."

"What, to replace your efforts?" Lister had given up on the closet, and was moving, with grim determination, towards the shower cubicle. What he thought he might find in there was beyond Rimmer, but then, most things Lister did was.

"I'll bet you anything that balmy droid fancies you, you know. If - and I realize this goes against the odds to no end - you end up not finding Kochanski again, you're in there."

"Shut yer gob, Rimmer. Final warning."

"Cat's little more than a pet. I wonder what the life span of the average Felis Sapiens is." Rimmer was feeling particularly morbid. Could he be blamed? "About the same as Homo Sapiens, I expect. Unless you count the nine lives thing, which I grant you might be a stretch."

One hand on the cubicle door, Lister turned and glared. "Is there a point to all this?"

"I thought you'd given me your Final Warning." Rimmer made little quotes in the air.

"I have. It's still standing."

"Look; my point is this: We're all going to die, sometime. Maybe this is just... my time? I mean, _yes_ , I'm a spineless coward, but I'm not an idiot. I know my luck will run out at some point, and when it does, I'd just much rather be prepared." Rimmer full well realized he was rambling. He couldn't seem to stop himself. If he did, the truth might crash down on him, and crush what was left of his body and mind. "Face it, Lister; I'm going to rot away into nothing, and you'll be left with a pair of idiots whose idea of social interaction is either exchanging fashion advice or having sex - neither of which are areas in which you excell - or the traditional pasttimes of a 1950's North American housewife, which, of course, might come in handy when you-"

Lister moved so fast that Rimmer did not see him until his hands were clamped over his mouth. "Shut. Up. Rimmer." His face was flush against Rimmer, like his body; the smell of him would be disconcerting if it wasn't for the fact that his massive hands - why hadn't he noticed them before - were covering Rimmer's mouth as well as his mouth. Rimmer whimpered, out of shock or... well, shock. Had to be shock. "You know who's going to die, fer absolute certain, no take-backs, bagsy, no return? Me. I'm not twenty five years old anymore. I'm not even thirty five. I'm getting old. Really old, not the sort where you can push a button and it goes away. One day, _Rimmer_ , I'm going to actually, properly, semantically correctly _die_ , and when that happens, you'll be there to watch it. You'll be there to watch me grow old, and you won't be able to do anything about it, and I'll see you growing older or younger, or older again, but never beyond this; never beyond 'nicely middle aged and attractive'."

 _Attractive_ , Rimmer thought in panic, but Lister went on.

"But ye know what? I don't mind. That's what I want. I want to die first. All right? If nothing else, I want to die with my friends around me. If I can't have Kochanski, if I can't go back home, I want that. You can't die, because if I lose one more thing, I'll..." He exhaled, as though the air was going out of him, and blinking, he stepped away. "So," he added, lamely. "Yeah."

Rimmer gaped. How could he possibly reply to that? He felt the edges of himself sort of... crackling. "Oh, thank goodness," he muttered, as he faded into unconciousness. What a narrow esc-

* * *

"Is he still breathing?" Lister leaned over Rimmer's flickering form, chewing on the braid that kept falling against his face.

"No, sir."

"Oh, _smeg_."

"Of course, it might be important at this juncture to keep in mind that he never did."

Lister's heart restarted itself with a painful jolt. "Right. Yeah. Right."

The medi-bay had been hastily converted to operating-mode, the chair folding back into a table, instrument panels lining the walls, and eager skutters hovering. Rimmmer, or what was left of him, lay stretched out and twitching, fingers, if you could still call them that, phasing in and out of pixellated existence. Kyten picked up a small reflex hammer, and hit the fluctuating space, first once, then again. He tilted his head slightly, and tutted.

" _What?_ " Lister exasperated. "What's happened now - is there anything we can do?"

"The aging process is accellerating. I don't know why; it is possible that as the lack of information to guide the simulation is triggering a negative feedback loop. The more of his data that is corrupted, the faster more of it becomes corrupted."

"Can't you stop it?"

"Not without shutting down Mister Rimmer's simulation entirely."

"So?" Lister hardly saw what the problem was. They turned Rimmer off for any and all reasons, including that time last Christmas when they didn't have enough decorations for the tree. He even turned himself off, when he wanted a little more privacy than what a mile-long starship could provide. "Turn his bee off!"

"Turning his bee off does not stop the simulation," Kryten explained, patiently. A little too patiently; it made Lister want to bang that hammer somewhere indecent on his body. If there were such a thing on a mechanoid. Lister was willing to take the time to find out. "In order to maintain personality core consistancy, Mister Rimmer's _mind_ still exists while his projection is turned off. The aging subroutine would still be running; if and when we restarted his projection, his body would be entirely corrupted, and unable to house his mind."

"So he'd be trapped in his bee, forever?" At least that wasn't dying. No matter what he'd said, Lister knew Rimmer would prefer almost anything to actual, proper death.

"Only indefinitely. Mister Rimmer is not an AI, other than techncially; his mind is constructed to work as a human brains, with all the faults inherent therein." Kryten snorted in disapproval. "An obvious design flaw, if you ask me."

"So he'll go mental, is that it?"

"Assuming the corruption of data doesn't bleed into his personality matrix, yes. Either way, turning him off would be worse than a stopgap measure. It might even accellerate the process further."

"I'm not hearing any answers here, Krytes," Lister warned. His jaw was clenching.

"We could reboot the hardware and restore him from backup."

"Who was on data back-up duty this month?"

"Mister..." Kryten deflated. "Ah. Mister Cat, sir."

"There goes that plan."

"It would only mean losing a few weeks of his memory, sir..."

"Nah. I never liked the backup idea anyway; it's a bit too much like making a clone of someone, giving them the same memories, then killing the original and calling them the same person."

Kryten made a valiant effort at raising his non-existant eyebrows, but Lister held up a hand.

"No. We're not doing it."

"Very well - in that case, the only possible solution would be to find a way to reset the process. That's what's missing; the reset function, if you will. But there's nothing remotely like that on the ship."

A loud crackle sounded from the table, making them both jump. With a sikcly sort of deflating sound, Rimmer's chest sunk into itself, swirling into a shapeless mass of dull color. Lister cleared his throat. "Maybe there is."

* * *

Nothing smelled as dull as the officer's quarters on the upper decks, with the possible exception of Wirebrush Hair's laundry pile. The human laundry process made very little sense to Cat to begin with, but that anyone would bother to wash clothes that were not only entirely clean, but had not been worn for three million year, and therefore were three million years out of fashion, was beyond him. Then again, very few things Twitchy Face ever did made sense. Cat hadn't smelled or heard or even seen him for a while now, though. Maybe he'd died again? It was a little bit odd how he kept doing that and hung around all the time, but hardly interesting enough to think about for more than a few seconds at a - hey, what was that?

Cat very carefully moved a few steps ahead, pushing his ears forward as far as they would go. His nose wrinkled within seconds; he could hear far better than he could smell, but Hamster Face was something special. Still, that meant he could relax and stop making himself look big and scary. Straightening the lapels of his faux-velour jacket, Cat spun around to surprise him. Stupid monkey, standing around just looking at an empty room, with a curious little ball in his hands. The ball looked vaguely familiar, but Cat couldn't be bothered to smell it and figure out what it was. Oh, there was something shiny in the room!

"Hey!" He yelled, torn between the fun of surprising someone and the fascinating shiny, glittery, silvery thing that was growing and moving and - _wow_ , now it was lighting up the whole room, and weird sort of pictures were moving in it. Kind of like Goalpost Head, but more grey and flickery. But this one was _female_ , which made him feel all sorts of interesting things. The way the room was grey and flickering along with her kept Cat from jumping at her, though. This was one of those things that looked like it was real, except it wasn't real, so it wasn't really real. Those were tricky.

"Hey, man."

Cat turned, sharply. He'd forgotten Curry Stain was there.

"Looks good, doesn't it?"

"It?" Cat frowned. "What do you mean, _it?_ " He looked back towards the woman. She was slight and dark-haired, short, and with teeth almost as predatory as a cat's. "Who is she?"

"That's Kochanski," the monkey-man said, quietly.

"That's not Cottage Cheese Breath." Cat narrowed his eyes. He didn't always bother remembering things, but he remembered ladies with pretty, soft parts.

"No, it's not. It's the other one. The one I knew. The one who died, in my universe."

"There are _more_ of them? And you can't even find one?"

"More fool me, eh?" Gerbil Cheeks was being really quiet. He smelled differently too; not quite like fear, but not like pleasure, either. With there not being too many other cat emotions to compare with, Cat shrugged it off. Maybe he'd just eaten something weird. Wouldn't be the first time. He looked at the shiny little ball again, and something clicked.

"Hey! That's that thing you were playing with before?"

"Not playing, but yeah."

"I remember! The time pocket!"

"Not... yeah, OK. Time pocket. It's not a bad word for it. Turns out it doesn't give ye more time; it pulls time back. Shows the past, like a recording."

Cat listened to the words, wondering what they meant. "So it can't get you more time."

"No."

"And it works. But you said it didn't work."

"It doesn't work the way I wanted it to. I thought I could change it, but I can't. This is all it does. Show ye the past. Over and over again."

"So what are you using it for?"

"Nothing. Nothing at all, really." Something clicked, and the silvery flickery shiny thing was gone. Cat slinked away to look at some of the funny shadows that now ran up the wall, and when he turned back again, he was alone.

* * *

"So explain this to me again," Cat said for the umpteenth time - a number Rimmer was, by now, increasingly willing to believe was real - "how come Nostril Face isn't all naked and jumbled up anymore?"

"No," Lister snapped, with finality. Rimmer glanced over, in faint surprise.

"Sir, as I've explained-"

"Not again, Kryten," Lister interjected, "he's just going to forget in half an hour and ask ye again."

"He did something magic with the control components in Lister's special little ball," Rimmer sing-songed. "And now I'm all ooja-cum-spiff again! Comprende?"

"Bud, I think that made me understand it _less_ than I did already."

"Keep at it, miladdo! Keep your nose to the grindstone, and you just might make it yet."

Cat made a noise half-way between a sneeze and a sneer. "I'm not doing that again; that time you told me the rotating floor polishers would help exfoliate my t-zone was the last time I take skin-care advice from you."

"Oh, for smeg's sake; you've more than killed that metaphor; you've pinned it helplessly to the ground and played with it for hours until it expired of fright."

"I have? Wow, I don't even remember; I must have blacked out from the thrill of the chase! I knew I'd get it before it got me." He leaned back, grinning with long, sharp teeth.

"Can we just concentrate on getting the ship safely out of this asteroid field?"

Rimmer glanced at Lister again. Frowning felt... different. His skin had changed, his entire face had changed, subtly, along with his body, and the man in the mirror was someone he only faintly recognized, but there were two important variables to consider: One, he was not dead and two, he was younger, and that was something you were generally supposed to appreciate. So Rimmer should appreciate it. Appreciate that once again, Lister had saved his continued existence. Oh smeg, he would probably have to _thank_ him.

"We should be home free in about an hour or so, sir."

"Home, eh?"

"In a manner of speaking, sir."

It was, Rimmer knew, only his imagination, but when he shifted in his chair, he could almost _feel_ the difference in the little metal thing buzzing life into him; making him... him.

He glanced to his left yet again, and met Lister's eyes.

And they flew on.


End file.
